3 comments

Good post as usual Dave.
I feel when Henri Cartier-Bresson used his classical structure (to great effect) he also knew it doesn’t happen instantly.
To use another of his quotes “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”

All your posts are brilliant, and this one is no exception, but… frankly, I rather doubt that disciplined composition is really the key to what made Cartier-Bresson’s images so compelling. Although I prefer Robert Frank to Cartier-Bresson (Frank’s work just seems to hit ya in the gut harder), it seems to me that what made both photographers great was the ability to leave things out of frame as much as it was to correctly composition subjects within the frame. It’s as much about what the photographs made you see in your head as what they showed your eyes. That’s the real genius, I think. And of the two, I sincerely feel that Frank was better at this sort of “Frameline Magnetism,” which is why I find his work more compelling.